Notice: Function add_theme_support( 'html5' ) was called incorrectly. You need to pass an array of types. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 3.6.1.) in /customers/6/8/f/missfoodwise.com/httpd.www/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5833 It all starts with fire. How Pure Food Camp in Sweden opened up my eyes to nature - Miss Foodwise

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It all starts with fire. How Pure Food Camp in Sweden opened up my eyes to nature

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I didn’t really know what to expect when I stepped on a plane with final destination Sweden in what was possibly one of the most dreadful moments of my life. My heart was pounding in my throat because I just left my gravely ill and much beloved 15 year old cat in the very loving hands of my husband. I sat on the Copenhagen station platform waiting for a train to Malmo in Sweden, I felt utterly alone and I just wanted to be home.

But suddenly I looked up and there I saw the wonderful smile of Sarah from Vienna. Like me she had a huge backpack, accompanied by a small one, dressed in outdoorsy clothing but in a far better mood than I was. Excited she asked if I was traveling to the food camp and we started talking, trying to figure out delayed and cancelled trains and word by word I was letting go of the overpowering sadness and worry.

We boarded a train and then a taxi which brought us to a beech forest in Skane. We were greeted by Lotta Ranert, creator of Pure Food Camp and one of the two women who brought us all together here and Camilla, the owner. There was cheese to welcome us, cheese made by Cecilia Timner, 20 footsteps from where we were standing, made with the milk of the pale creamy fudge-coloured cows we heard mooing in the distance.

Nothing happens in my brain here before I have made sure we have this fire and it’s going and we can make food and tea.

The camp existed out of a couple of yurts and a big mother-yurt which was the heart of the site. In the centre of that yurt was a warming wood fired stove with water boiler that created a spectacular display of steam, there were pots, pans, crockery and a couple of essentials. Each of our own yurts had a sweet little blue door, painted with illustrations. Two little beds with a duvet and woolly blanket in each yurt, a water container, oil lamps, matches, a kerosene fire and a bowl to hold water to wash ourselves. It was a simple set up but yet it felt like luxury.
Our outdoor loo was of the glamorous sort with a see through roof, wooden walls and an actual toilet seat. Much more than I was expecting but very welcome indeed on moments when going behind a big tree wasn’t an option.

After talking us through how to tend to the oil lamps and kerosene fire, loo and a few other practicalities we were expected up a gentle hill where a large table was set with vintage teacups and plates ready for “Fika”. Fika can be compared to a simple afternoon tea yet less formal and it can happen several times a day. One of the Swedes told us in many Swedish companies Fika is even a big thing, Fika is serious business and should not be skipped.

The kanelbullar (cinnamon swirl buns, see my recipe here), almondbullar and chocolatabullar (balls made of butter, cacao and oats) were passed around the table laughing as if we were at day 5 not hour 2 into the camp week. Tea and coffee came from tall sturdy steel teapots who hung from the smoking open fires. It was supposed to be raining I remembered, but instead here we were, outside, drinking hot drinks and eating all kinds of bullar while secretly gazing around us, taking in the details of the forest, savouring this unique moment in our lives.

The sun was lowering on the sky and Camilla, the owner of the Nyrups Naturhotel that was our yurt camp introduced us to the menu of the dinner we would be cooking on the fires. Two vegetable starters, a main and a pudding, each in a basket, just the ingredients and the suggestion of what to do with them. Sarah from Vienna and I teamed up and went for the main. In our basket we found locally caught perch, potatoes, cavollo nero, a selection of forest mushrooms and a couple of carrots. Sarah did potatoes and pickled carrots while I fried the cavollo nero and the mushrooms in plenty of butter and a touch of fire in a pan I’d love to call my own. When it was time for the fish I thought of a recipe I learned to make a week before by a friend in England, cooked in clay, straight onto the embers. Lacking clay we used every bit of newspaper we could find – although it was meant for starting fires – rubbed the fish with lemony wood sorrel we quickly foraged in the last evening light, a bit of thyme, juniper berries and a healthy doze of pepper, salt and a good knob of butter or two. The fish we wrapped in baking parchment because we did not have a large leaf at hand, then we wrapped each parcel in the soaking wet newspaper. Everyone went in to start dinner while a couple of us stayed behind to cover all the open fires with pans of fish parcels.

By the time we had finished our starters: cauliflower, bacon and potato by Gabriella from Spain, Emily from England and Helen from Germany and beetroot & Swedish halloumi by Kerstin also from England we gathered the parcels and removed the now charred newspaper. The perch was to my great amusement perfectly done, not too far, pearly white and very moist. Everyone got a parcel and as a side the kale and mushrooms I had fried on the fire earlier, parts of the kale slightly crisp because fire tends to lick the inside of your pan. Fire adds a seasoning you can’t recreate, because it’s also the smoke in your eyes, the heat on your hands and arms that add to the taste of cooking food in the wild.The wood sorrel is definitely a new favourite leaf to use, I wonder if I can make it grow in my wild garden at home… Fair haired Titti Qvarnström – our other host and the first female head chef in Sweden to receive a Michelin star – was sitting next to me at dinner and she approved of the fish so that’s good enough for me!

Pudding was just that, a delightful cake skilfully baked in a tin on the open fire by former UK Masterchef winner Keri. The darker bits were the best, we had seconds, drowned in a custard she made from scratch and on a temperamental fire, no mean feat.
By now I bless myself and the stars to be here. This is already an unforgettable trip and were only just started our journey. I realise however that we are all so out of touch with nature. When you have no electricity things become simple and difficult at the same time.

Image by Torbjorn Lagerwall edited

After this feast accompanied by excellent local Swedish wine and beer the last ones standing toast with a traditional herb liqueur Sarah kindly brought us from Austria. Then it suddenly it hits me when I go outside to find a big tree… it’s incredibly dark. Kerstin comes with me because I am a wimp. We head back to our yurts, armed with all the oil lamps we can find because I managed to scare the group with my own fears about zombies in the forest. We all have a laugh but secretly hold to that lamp with a passion.
First night in a yurth, in the middle of the woods, with someone we only just met a few hours ago… My yurt-mate Keri and I decided to keep the oil lamp on while we try to sleep… we can’t face the complete darkness just yet.

The next morning my insomniac self awaited dawn eager to cook breakfast on the fires. I looked out of our yurt, the sky is red, beautiful. I decide a simple bun in my hair instead of my intricate hairdos and no make-up are in order, because we don’t have a mirror, and we’re in the middle of a forest, who cares! I do, but still I go with the bun.

Instructions were to arrive for breakfast between 7 and 9, I arrived at 7 which meant I helped make the fires, started to boil the water and kept the fire going, or at least tried to. Although I’m a morning person it does take some time before I’m really my spring chicken self, but not here in the woods. Nothing happens in my brain here before I have made sure we have this fire and it’s going and we can make food and tea. It’s refreshing to feel my brain stop. Gone is all the planning, the work, the worry, the silly day-to-day frustrations. It all just doesn’t matter until you have made sure there is fire. It feels like my head is less foggy here in the woods, I experience a focus I never have this time of day at home. Home is where the electric kettle is, the fridge with milk and yoghurt, everything can be just taken without even thinking about it, on auto-pilot, day after day, after day.

After breakfast we went out into the woods with nature expert Pontus Dowchan to forage for dinner but not before he makes us do some dancing in a circle which takes on a witchcraft feel when I spot the tiny red mushroom in the middle of our circle. After we have made our juices flow by the exercise we begin our walk. Living in the wild means you will spend most of your time gathering food, making fire and cooking the food. We’re going back to this primal situation where modern folly is irrelevant. Pontus tells us it’s always hard to know when you’re going to be done foraging because one day you will find what you need quickly and on other days it will take an hour to find just one chanterelle mushroom.
While foraging we learn how nature likes to deceive us by growing the herb you need next to the herb that can poison you. The details are small, but we learn about them and pick the ones that are safe. One of us has a cut in their finger and the master forager just rubs a green herb in it to stop the bleeding, it works. It also works as aspirine he tells us. For once I wished I had a headache just to try it out.
Pontus teaches us to look at what’s in front of us like an owl does, take everything is, we hear wild boar and then find the tracks of the sow and her piglet, we almost walked over it but are starting to really see while before we were totally blind.
My mind is been taken over by gathering the things we need for dinner and thinking of ways we can also use these leaves in cooking. After we have found enough herbs and leaves for our dinner we do a 40 minute hike up a hill where we are greeted by Cecilia with lunch. Local cheese and cured meats, sea bass carpaccio with crips bread are washed down with ale or juice. I take a moment and take my plate a few steps away from our group, the view is beautiful, the smell of the moss and the decaying leaves enters my nose and I breath in deep, noticing how I never really take deep breaths like these at home. I put my beer and plate down on the soft green moss and take a picture, I want to remember this place, this lunch, this moment. Then I return to the group, still in my head, very quiet which is unusual for me.
After lunch we take the healthy 40 minute hike back down the hill and to our campsite. We enter the mother yurt, light the little candles and snug around the heart of the tent – the stove – in wooden chairs covered with warming sheepskin and blankets. The moment we settle, it starts pissing down outside, we have been very fortunate to have been dry on our walk and lunch. I do wonder though about the wood in the rain… will we be able to light our fires if the wood is soaked…
Titti arrives to start cooking with us and luckily the sky locks are closing and we are in for dry weather tonight. I spot a tin of Surströmming, fermented Baltic herring which is an infamous Swedish delicacy. People with lots of hair on their chest go for older tins which look like they are ready to burst, wimps like us go for a young tin but nevertheless the beast does spit and once I get the hang of the can opener juice squirts out all over Lotta… I made the right choice volunteering to opening that tin it seems! The beast did get me in the end because the fermented herring is not gutted and brave as I was opening the tin, I also volunteer to gut and fillet the little buggers. By now I smell like Surströmming and I start to like the smell. Everyone who comes close to me nearly get sick because of the smell but they want a picture, they’re not looking forward to trying it later on however.
The group is now taking turns to churn the butter in an old green butter churn Titti brought us. She says to add vinegar which is new to me and I must say it is pretty good. Flat breads with the nettle seeds we collected are being fried on the open fire, ready for our starter, the Surströmming. I’ve cut little fillets of the herring enough so everyone has some. The nettleseed flatbread is topped with chopped boiled potato, sour cream and onion followed by the feared Surströmming… Those who are brave take a moment before the first bite… It’s not that bad, it’s intense but not too bad at all.
 
For our mains we are making beef sausages from scratch and acorn burgers for the vegetarians of the group. Pontus had already brought us acorns because it’s too early in the season for mature acorns and they need to be soaked or leeched to take the bitter flavour away. I wonder how ok it is to eat acorns as I know that for example pigs haven’t eaten acorns for generations they become sick from eating them but Pontus assures me it is fine as long as you soak and boil them. Which we do and after they look like chocolate, they taste of not much.
We’ve been a tad slow with our cooking, we’re having too much fun enjoying the moment so by the time we have to start frying the sausages and burgers and dress the salad it is pitch black. Nature waits for no man, or woman but I think we’re all starting to see better in the dark. I’m not missing light at all, we just have the fires and a couple of oil lamps and candles, it looks pretty, we really have too much lights on normally.
I treat everyone who wants some to an apperitive of Belgian ‘Oude Geuze’ our typical sour beer which is created by spontaneous fermentation, something unique to one region of Belgium. We feast on our foraged and cooked food, again accompanied by good Swedish wine, beer and excellent conversation. I stay up chatting as one of the last ones again, already thinking of breakfast the next morning.

If you haven’t spent a few days tending fires in the middle of a forest with only basic needs, you really haven’t lived.

Up as early as 6 again I make my way to the mother tent. I’m really early, but I’m eager to help make the fires and cook. Once Camilla and I get the fires going I start the pancake batter. We move outside up the hill to cook them on the fire pit, the stove is slow this morning so the teapot joins the pancake pan on the fire. I’m savouring this morning and wish I could be cooking on this fire for a couple more hours. My brain is full of ideas on what to cook, how it would taste, how cool it would be. I learn a lot from Camilla, she shares her knowledge so generously. By the time I have a nice pile of pancakes nearly everyone is up and behind me chatting full of cheer round the large wooden table. I top my pancakes with local yoghurt and fruit puree, I become quiet again, it’s just so good… I loose the conversation of the table and gaze around me… a yorkshire pudding would be nice on that fire…
 
After breakfast we have to leave our beautiful campsite. Although I know plenty of other and exciting things are coming, I already miss this place. Back by the entrance of the Natur Hotel we all stock up on the beautiful cheese we’ve been eating at Cecilia’s cheese shop and I think how perfect it is to have a campsite or nature hotel like this which has its own cheese shop!
A little bus drives us to Elise Farm where we are told to get a shower. All apart from one of us did not have a shower for two days. We smell of fire, fresh air and Lotta and I also of Surströmming. My room with ensuite bathroom and running hot water suddenly feels very lush. I shower and call home to check on my cat again.
After getting cleaned up and changing is less outdoorsy clothes we were off to visit ‘Bränneriets Gård‘ a pick-your-own berry farm and farmshop with café. We have a fantastic lunch here, a lot of vegetables and the best potato and leek soup I’ve ever tasted. After being outside in the wild since sunday afternoon, this is a very welcome cockles of the heart warming treat. I feel my rosy cheeks burning… we go outside and it feels like summer again. We pick berries, eat possibly more than we put in our punnet and we all have an intense glow about us. Did the forest change us all? Do we all appreciate stuff more at least in this moment in time?
Once we have a decent harvest the owner Margitha Nillson teaches us to make sea buckthorn jam, and two kinds of pickled cucumber. Once we’ve finished that we fill a bottle each with either fruit or herbs to later drown in vodka to create our own Snaps.
 
We leave this quintessentially Swedish farm to make a short stop at the castle which houses the Purity Vodka distillery where Titti is filming for American television today. Titti is probably the most modest person I’ve met, I realise only now she is quite famous. She is also on the cover of a very trendy yet indie magazine in the UK at the moment but yet she has the air as if all of that worldly silliness is just that, silly. It’s all about the food and doing what she loves, preferably with her husband Andre by her side. They are preparing to open their own place in Titti’s home town Malmo, a town which has been single handedly put on the foodie map by Titti. I need to visit Malmo, I need to come back.
Back at Elise farm Sarah and Emily try to convince me to come down from my room and join them in the outdoor pool. I did bring my bathing suit so although my husband was convinced I would not, I did, went down and had a glass of red in the water. Titti, Andre and Lotta join us with wine, yet not in the pool until suddenly it starts raining and we all rush inside like a bunch of 16-year olds. I shower again (seems extravagant right now) and head down to the kitchen to help Andre with the dinner. I help roll the ‘kottbullar’, you might know them from IKEA but the real deal tastes nothing like them, and far far better. For the vegetarians there is ‘pealafel’ a falafel made with Swedish peas as an ode to Malmo’s multicultural society by still using Swedish ingredients. We have very exceptional wine brought to us by fellow camper Helen who is a sommelier in Berlin. Now I understand why she had two suitcases… one was filled with wine!
The evening is not over because we have to set our traps to catch crayfish! We go out in the dark, something we’ve gotten used to now and threw a basket each in the lake attached to a piece of rope. Now it’s just wait and see.
The next morning we go for our crayfish baskets and everyone has a decent catch. Tonight we are treated to a traditional Swedish crayfish party for which we have to finish our home made Snaps! During the day we work up an appetite accompanying Titti and a couple of local hunters to catch ducks. Titti walks in front of me, clutching her fathers hunting rifle. She later explains us that there are women rifles too but that they give far worse backlash when shooting so a heavy man’s gun is definitely the way forward. We keep hold for a while in the field, Titti in position, calm, in a perfectly elegant pose yet unaware of it. A few ducks land after being shot, the moment they land is an awful sound, the hunters later say they still feel it too, you have to feel it to keep on respecting the animal. After the hunt we get the chance to shoot clay pigeons, I want to feel what this rifle feels like, I’ve shot one before, when I was a teen and shot right in the wooden target and won a chicken. I’m sure it was beginners luck because now I’m miles off the clay pigeon and I nearly dislocate my shoulder because I missed the information that the more you hold on tight, the less it will hurt.
 
After a lunch of duck, not ours but ones shot a few days earlier we get cleaned up and those who fancy can help prepare for the crayfish party. I have fun helping Andre and Titti, I realise again how much I just love cooking while at home on busy days it’s been feeling more and more a burden rather than a pleasure. When we’re done, the other girls have set the table and decorated it with perfectly kitchy decorations and our crayfish party can begin. The deal is, you eat, then sing a song, drink a shot of Snaps and eat. Typical side dishes to a crayfish party are cheese pies, cold cuts, cheese, cold fish, and salad. With crisp bread of course and toast which Emily has been skilfully toasting at the far end of the table next to the toaster. We laugh, we sing, we drink, Lotta sings a song for us, I even sing a Flemish song for them, we’re like a big family and that is perfect because crayfish party’s are something Swedes only really do at home. Perfect evening I’d say.
The next morning we meet for breakfast and afterwards we each give our feedback to one of the ladies. They want to learn from this experience. This really was a perfect trip but I do give them feedback which could help.
These few days were like a reset button for me, a reality check. I feel as if food these days is more about fashion, more about appearance, numbers, popularity and you know what, it’s refreshing when you’re in a forest without any modern comfort, there really only is one thing and that is make sure there is a fire. Fire means food, warmth and a hot drink, it also means light in the darkness. So from now on I’m going to think more about fire.
Thank you Lotta Ranert and Titti Qvarnström for organising this gathering, Camilla Jonsson for generously sharing her knowledge of the wild, and all my new friends. We bonded over Swedish beer, German wine, Austrian liqueur and Belgian ale. But most of all we bonded over fire.
If you haven’t spent a few days tending fires in the middle of a forest with only basic needs, you really haven’t lived.

Image by Torbjorn Lagerwall

Short
Skåne County or Scania is the Southern part of Sweden. Lotta told us it is Sweden’s larder, a bit like how Kent is the garden of England. Most of the produce is grown in this area making it less touristy than the rest of Sweden. Which is a shame, Skåne is beautiful and I would highly recommend traveling here. Malmö is the capital of Skåne and I haven’t had the chance to visit though it is high on my list.
To get to Skåne you best take a flight to Copenhagen and then take a train in the airport to Malmö or where you want to go. It’s only a trip of just over an hour or so.
Lotta’s business is Pure Food Camp, so if you’d like to spend a few days back to basic, all about food, from 2018 there will be trips available for the public. I can HIGHLY recommend this, in fact I can not wait to see what Lotta comes up with next.
Recipes
Since returning home all I could think of when baking were the cinnamon I ate in Sweden and how different they were. I wanted to create my favourite ones at home, and although I have baked them before, they were never how I like them. But now I nailed so follow the link here to my recipe for Kanelbullar.
Green herb snaps
The flavour is very similar to Absinth thanks to the choice of green herbs. The ones I used were Yarrow flower, Spanish Chevril and a little Wormwood. Also one bud of the anisseed flavoured brown things you see in the picture, I forgot the name so if anyone knows!
The Use a good vodka.
Seabucktorn and white currant jam
I assume you all know how to make jam, the seabucktorn need to be boiled then sifted, the white currants are added later so they stay whole. The ingredients of the jam we made are:
  • 1kg white currants (frozen is fine)
  • 500 g puree of seabucktorn
  • 0,75 dl lemon juice
  • 1200 g sugar
  • 1 1/2 tbsp pectin
Pax Citra (one of the beer we tasted and was really really good!)
Disclaimer
I went on this trip as a guest of Visit Sweden in light of their Nordic Feast event in London where Titti and Keri will be hosting demo’s. I was however not payed or obligated to write this post and did so on my own account. I only write about what I enjoy and this trips was something very special.
If you’d like to join The Great Nordic Feast in London, they have kindly given me a code to share with my readers, just use FOODIE when booking to receive a 20% off on your ticket price!

Reader Interactions

Thanks for reading x Regula

Comments

  1. Sally - mycustardpie says

    I’d already read Kirsten’s post and was drawn into the oeace and magic of the forest. You brought me back for another vivid virtual journey of heightened senses in such close proximity to nature. Beautiful honest account Regula.

    Reply

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